Lessons from Youth in Focus – research report
10 April 2017
This report highlights key lessons from the Youth in Focus (YIF) programme and is the full research report that accompanies the Lessons from Youth in Focus summary report.
The research report contains detailed information about each of the 15 YIF projects and their different models for delivering resettlement support to young custody leavers. It provides a thorough analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data sets from the projects, including data from interviews, project client databases, survey returns, and offending data relating to YIF participants.
The BYC Model of effective resettlement has been used as a framework for understanding and describing the lessons learned from the YIF programme under the following headings:
- Young people, offending and process of change
- Facilitating and sustaining engagement
- Providing individually tailored and continuous support
- Delivering coordinated resettlement services
The final section of the report explores how the projects delivered and monitored key resettlement outcomes, and uses case studies to determine the costs and benefits of effective resettlement delivered by the YIF programme. Findings illustrate not only how substantial the ‘costable’ benefits (those for which a monetary cost can be assessed) can be in cases where projects manage to support young people on pathways out of offending but also how, in aggregate, some YIF projects have managed to generate benefits that are well in excess of the costs of delivering their resettlement work.